[RodB]

Resistor #23 should be 20k, no higher than 22k.

For an antenna I use a 6 foot piece of cat5 ethernet cable. There are 8 wires in the cable. Each colored pair, eg. green with green/white, is connected together at one end then connect the other ends to wires of different colors. When finished you have a 48 foot continuous wire antenna. I'm using one right now in my lower level work shop and it screams stations all over the band.

BTW You mentioned the ground connection fix. Check all the tube socket rivets for ground lugs. I discovered 2 lugs measuring over 500k ohms to ground on my 1936 650. The rivets are not a guaranteed ground point.